Thursday, February 15, 2007

The sequel moratorium.

Previously, I promised to put forth new thoughts about writing sequels. Given the recent turn of events, however, I'm not too keen on working on my sequel to THE GUARDIAN right now. Not to say that I don't ever want to write it--I'm still super interested in that story--but it's not going to do me any good to write a second book in a series at this point. If it turns out that I can't sell THE GUARDIAN for whatever reason, having a sequel all ready isn't going to be worth much.

Instead, on Beverly's advice, I'm going to start working on an entirely different project for now, and I'll resume work on the sequel once THE GUARDIAN is actually sold. I have a number of other projects that I'm really interested in working on, and so this is actually exciting for me. I don't want to work on any of the other series/trilogies that I have ideas for right now (since these are harder to plan and to sell), so instead I'm going to work on a standalone novel. It's a breath of fresh air just to be able to work on a project that doesn't require preplanning seven novels!

This is also good for me because it separates my current writing work from the stress and anxiety associated with the book I'm currently trying to sell. It's a bit of a shame, because everything was just starting to fall into place for the sequel, but I'm saving all my notes and will revisit them as soon as things are more settled with THE GUARDIAN.

So, expect more thoughts on writing in the coming weeks, but I wouldn't expect anything on sequels for a while yet.

Thanks to both of your for the well wishes! It was definitely hard at first to decide to step away from the series, but now I'm actually really excited about this new book. I'll probably post more about it later this week, but so far I'm really finding that taking on an entirely different project is changing how I think about some aspects of writing.

My thoughts on that aren't too solidified yet, but I'll post more once they are. I was always like you, Christina, and had a lot of trouble starting "other" work whenever I was going strong on a main project. It's both refreshing and surprising for me to have it going so well this time--once I figure out exactly what all has changed, I'll let you know.